Thanks a lot Ben, actually I managed to make it work erasi=
ng the SimpleDB Priam uses to keeps instances... I would pulled the last co=
mmit from the repo, not sure if it helped or not.

But you message made me curious about something... =A0How do you do to add =
more Cassandra nodes on the fly? Just update the autoscale properties? I sa=
w instaclustr.com changes the instan=
ce type as the number of nodes increase (not sure why the price also become=
s higher per instance in this case), I am guessing priam use the data backe=
d up to S3 to restore a node data in another instance, right?

Off the top of my head I would check to make=
sure the Autoscaling Group you created is restricted to a single=A0Availab=
ility=A0Zone, also Priam sets the number of EC2 instances it expects based =
on the maximum instance count you set on your scaling group (it did this la=
st time i checked a few months ago, it's behaviour may have changed).=
=A0

So I would make your desired, min and max instances for your=
scaling group are all the same, make sure your ASG is restricted to a sing=
le=A0availability=A0zone (e.g.=A0us-east-1b) and then (if you are able=
to and there is no data in your cluster) delete all the SimpleDB entries P=
riam has created and then also possibly clear out the cassandra data direct=
ory.=A0

Other than that I see you've raise=
d it as an issue on the Priam project page , so see what they say ;)=

Have your added the priam =
java agent to cassandras JVM argurments (e.g.=A0-javaagent:$CASS_HOME/lib/priam-cass-extensions-1.1.15.jar)=A0 and does the web container runnin=
g priam have permissions to write to the cassandra config directory? Also w=
hat do the priam logs say?

I put the priam log of the first nod=
e bellow. Yes, I have added priam-cass-extensions to java args and Priam IS=
actually writting to cassandra dir.

=A0

If you want to get up and runni=
ng quickly with cassandra, AWS and priam quickly check out www.instaclustr.c=
om you.=A0

We deploy Cassandra under your =
AWS account and you have full root access to the nodes if you want to explo=
re and play around + there is a free tier which is great for experimenting =
and trying Cassandra out.

That sounded really great. I am not =
sure if it would apply to our case (will consider it though), but some part=
ners would have a great benefit from it, for sure! I will send your link to=
them.